SAN MARINO, Calif.— Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographs of Charles
Greene & Henry Greene architecture will be shown for the first time in the
United States in a focused loan exhibition on view at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens from
June 18 through Oct. 3, 2016.

Ishimoto
turned his lens toward the work of California Arts and Crafts architects Greene
& Greene in 1974, producing a suite of images for the Japanese design
magazine Approach. Before his death,
Ishimoto expressed his wish to have these photographs shown in the United
States. Now, more than 40 years after the photos were made, his wish will come
true.

Forty-six remarkable
black-and-white photographs printed by the artist and on loan from The Museum
of Art, Kochi in Japan will showcase the Approach
magazine commission along with six seminal photographs that Ishimoto made of
the 17th-century Katsura Imperial Villa in Japan in 1954.

“Yasuhiro
Ishimoto: Bilingual Photography and the Architecture of Greene & Greene”
coincides with the reopening of a refreshed permanent display of Greene &
Greene furniture (organized in collaboration with the Gamble House/University
of Southern California). The proximity of the two galleries will allow visitors
to experience the designs of Charles and Henry Greene (known for principled,
hand-crafted, and distinctive early 20th-century Arts and Crafts homes) just a
few yards away from their photographic interpretations by Ishimoto.

“Yasuhiro
Ishimoto’s beautifully sensitive photographs of famous Greene & Greene
commissions are extraordinary in their composition, texture, and perception,
and will add new meaning for visitors, as they wander the galleries and explore
our collections,” said Kevin Salatino, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the
Art Collections at The Huntington. “We are seriously committed to collecting,
and displaying, works that represent both the field of American Arts and Crafts
as well as its predecessor, the European Design Reform movement. Being able to
showcase Ishimoto’s work provides a fascinating, and exquisite, interpretation
of that world.”

Although the
Japanese influence on the architecture of the Greene brothers has been widely
acknowledged, this exhibition is the first in the United States to examine the
influence from a Japanese perspective.

“Ishimoto’s
images represent a unique vision, fashioned by his birth and education in the
United States and a subsequent career in Japan, where he ultimately became a
naturalized citizen,” said Anne Mallek, former curator of the Gamble House, a
1908 Greene & Greene structure in Pasadena, Calif.

“He
developed a new and personal perspective, liberated from historical precedent
or framework, so he could capture a 17th-century villa near Kyoto, or the
Greenes’ work, in a manner bordering on the abstract. His images don’t set the
works of architecture apart from the viewer, nor do they put them on a
pedestal. One is pulled in, as if to observe with the photographer the details
that only the architects and craftsmen may have cared about in creating the
structure.” Mallek curated the exhibition with Edward R. “Ted” Bosley, Gamble
House director.

David Gamble house,

northeast sleeping porch detail

(Greene and
Greene, architects), 1974,

American
post-World War II photographer Minor White called Ishimoto a “visual
bi-linguist”—someone who, by circumstances of birth and education, became
uniquely suited to interpret cultural links between Japan and America. Born in
San Francisco in 1921 to immigrant parents, Yasuhiro Ishimoto grew up in Japan
and returned to California to attend college in 1939. In 1942, he was removed
to a Colorado internment camp, where he spent the war years nurturing an
interest in photography. He later enrolled at the Chicago Institute of Design,
founded by ex-Bauhaus instructor László Moholy-Nagy. Ishimoto returned to Japan
in the 1960s.

“Yasuhiro
Ishimoto: Bilingual Photography and the Architecture of Greene & Greene”
features a gallery booklet and wall text in both English and Japanese, with the
installation organized into six thematic categories: pattern, rhythm, post and
beam, details, views, light and dark.

In a
striking example of the photographer’s attention to architectural details,
Blacker House with Interior Detail captures a portion of the staircase of the
1907 Robert R. Blacker house in Pasadena. The photograph focuses on the
softness of a carved spiral, or whirlpool form—traditionally known in Japanese
as naruto—bringing to life the velvety smooth texture of the hand-sanded teak,
as well as the layers and insertions of wood members.

The
composition demonstrates Ishimoto’s sensitivity to the timeless artistry
inherent in the Greenes’ work, in the same manner that his photographs of Katsura
Villa 20 years earlier had translated the details of its 17th-century buildings
for modern audiences.

Another
highlight of the exhibition is a view of the Gamble House’s west elevation. The
photo captures the house in the late afternoon sun as it highlights the ends of
projecting rafter tails, while throwing the undersides of the eaves and
sleeping porches into deep shadow. “Ishimoto is playing with contrast here, and
how light can transform a building graphically,” said Mallek. “He’s emphasizing
its horizontality as the elongated shadow of the sleeping porch roof extends at
an angle down the façade of the house.” The image also sympathizes with Charles
Greene’s suggested purpose for the extended rafters on the house—Greene once
said they were included “because they cast such beautiful shadows.”

Such design
elements may have been born of the Greenes’ interest in Japanese construction,
and many of Ishimoto’s photographs of Katsura Villa and of the Greenes’ work
would appear to authenticate this connection. In both groups of images, the
artist focuses on the graceful intersections of vertical and horizontal lines
in post-and-beam structures, as he does in Gamble House Sleeping Porch Detail.
This photograph of a structurally complex porch corner of intersecting beams
and distinctively shaped railings seems to have been made with a loving
eye—planks of wood become soft and undulating, and the use of natural light
makes smooth surfaces reflective while architectural shapes glow with a magical
quality.

“Ishimoto
rarely made an image of a structure in its entirety, but chose rather to
examine details and create abstractions, focusing on pattern, light, and
structure,” said Mallek. “All of the images telegraph his sensitivity to
material, texture, form and light.”

Credit

This
exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Steven and Kelly
McLeod Family Foundation.Additional
support was provided by The Rose Hills Foundation, Frank and Toshie Mosher,
Harvey and Ellen Knell, Mr. and Mrs. Mark J. Ledbetter, Akiko Satsuma, and the
Susan and Stephen Chandler Exhibition Endowment.

About The Huntington

The
Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is a
collections-based research and educational institution serving scholars and the
general public. More information about The Huntington can be found at
huntington.org

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